"Zeppelins Over Denver" now available to pre-order

On April 24, I guesstimated that "Zeppelins Over Denver" would be out by summer. You have to be careful with these things as publishing tends to take time and you don't want to get readers' hopes up unnecessarily. 

"Zeppelins" is now on pre-order (May 5 official pub date) at your favorite bookstore or even from your least favorite big-box outlet that places book bins somewhere among twelve-packs of underwear and rows of gleaming BBQ grills. 

My goal is to get the book into local stores and those in my old stomping grounds of Wyoming and Colorado. It's a bit tricky because the book is set in Colorado, specifically Denver, in 1919. I'm now officially a Florida resident, a return to my roots and the comfort of family. My Colorado roots go back to 1919 when all of my grandparents decided Denver was the place to be. 

My grandmother Florence decided to extend her tenure as an army nurse in France to the new army hospital in someplace called Aurora. There she met and married my grandfather Raymond, a cavalry officer from Iowa who left the war with lung problems so they shipped him to the hospital that eventually became Fitzsimons Army Hospital. Cavalry officer met nurse and there you go. 

My Irish immigrant grandfather Martin left sweltering Chicago after having a lung surgically removed due to empyema. The surgeon urged him to recuperate in a drier clime, Arizona, for instance, or maybe Denver. He chose Denver. Grandmother Agnes, the first postmistress of a tiny town near Cincinnati, jumped into a Model T with her sister and two gal-pals and drove the rugged road to Colorado. She and her sister decided to stay while the others returned to the banks of the Ohio. Martin and Agnes met at the Hibernian Club and one thing led to another and here I am.

That's just background. The setting is important to me as I was born in Denver, did some of my growing up there, returned after college to work, left Denver to go to grad school up I-25 at CSU, and then moved north to Cheyenne to work for the Wyoming Arts Council for 25 years. The Monday after I retired, I started writing this book.

Co-worker at retirement party: Hey Mike, whatcha gonna do after retirement? You can't just sit around, you know. 

Me: I'm gonna sit around  and write a novel. A historical novel.

Co-worker: That's nice. Give me another slice of that pie.

Ten years later, I'm in Florida and I have a book. Easy as pie.

Stay tuned here for more updates. 

"Zeppelins Over Denver" due out by summer

Just finished reviewing the galley proofs of my first novel. My first published novel. I’ve been writing for a long time, since I was in my 20s. I actually started earlier, as a kid writing letters that were rarely answered. My first readers were disinterested friends and family members. Maybe that’s where I learned how to hold an audience. Most of my early writing had an audience of one. I discovered journaling and keep up that written practice with this blog. I registered with the original Blogger from Pyra Press in 2001 and posted my first weblog in November 2005. I began blogging regularly in January 2006.

But back to the novel. The title is “Zeppelins Over Denver” and it will be out in May from The Ridgeway Press of Michigan in Detroit. Publisher and friend M.L. Liebler helped me get the ball rolling and I am forever grateful. Small presses rule! Big presses are great too but they have spent a lot of time ignoring me. C’est la vie! I was learning how to write all of this time, from the early 1970s until now. I’m still learning. Always will be.

“Zeppelins” is a historical novel set in 1919 Denver. Its origins lie on the yellowing pages of my paternal grandmother’s diary from her time as a U.S. Army nurse in France, 1918-19. She kept one diary in her lifetime and it was lost for decades, existing only as a rumor that faded with each passing year. It was rediscovered in my sister Molly’s basement in Tallahassee. She’s a nurse like our mother and my father’s mother. Eileen, another sister who also was a nurse, took the diary and transcribed it. She asked me for editorial assistance. As writer and editor, I gladly provided it. I whipped it into shape, working more as a conservator than a fiction writer. I corrected spelling and punctuation. I changed no contents, censored nothing. It was lovely just the way it was.

Eileen asked me to put together a little book for the family. Along the way, I researched the service of army nurses in the Great War and the Great War itself. I thought I knew at least some of the history. I had read war novels such as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Good Soldier Schweik,” “Soldier of the Great War,” and “Winter Soldier.”  I had read “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman and Paul Fussell’s excellent “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I’ve read the poetry: Wilfred Owen, Siegried Sassoon, and Robert Graves. I have read some of the celebratory war poetry, too. Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees" was my father’s favorite poem. I wondered if Dad had contemplated the shattered trees in the Bulge battlefield in the Ardennes in 1944. Kilmer’s reputation lives on at Columbia University’s annual Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest. The Columbia Daily Spectator once ranked the contest as number one among the “Best Columbia Arts Traditions.”

The more I read, the more I realized how little I knew. I dug deeper. In the end, I decided to absorb everything I knew and let it come out in what I see as a historical novel colored by the darkly humorous war novels of Joseph Heller, Juroslav Hasek, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. And there you have it. Ten years of work poured into almost 400 pages. I hope you enjoy it. If you are inspired by the characters, some of them will return in the sequel, “Patrick of the Mountains.” The draft manuscript is complete and it will be published once the edits and revisions are complete. I have roughed out a plot for a third novel but we will see where that goes.

The NOMAD LitMag launches "Breakthroughs" issue tonight in Salt Lake City

Two of my stories are in the new issue. There's a 
sampler tonight at the Sweet Library in SLC. Not
really in my neighborhood anymore but check it
out, you readers around The Great Salt Lake. Some of
us far-flung writers will be part of a Zoom reading
coming in May.

The choice is clear for us Rogue Catholics

Fallen-away Catholics like me have a choice to make.

Catholic or not? Am I on the side of the outspoken Roman Catholic Pope Leo XIV or am I not? And, if I am, should I not be allied with the Catholic Church and what it stands for, even though I oppose its policies on abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, and its awful record of child abuse. I have long criticized the Catholic Church’s alliance with the Religious Right, which I’ve always called a pact with the devil.

But Pope Leo of Chicago is socking it to Donald Trump, the creepiest human to ever be elected U.S. president.  We know the agenda of the Religious Right as we’ve seen the movement in action all our adult lives. The underlying precept of the RR is hatred of Catholics. We worship false gods: saints, martyrs, The Holy Ghost, and the pope. We used to worship in a foreign tongue, Latin, and we think that a cracker and a bit of wine are the body and blood of Christ. We are demon Papists!

Meanwhile, the Christonationalists of the RR bows down to images of Trump and Christ together, best buds, not the holy trinity but the holy duo. We laugh. They nod and say amen. Let me tell you this, brothers and sisters. If you don’t know hypocrisy when you see it, you weren’t raised as an Irish-Catholic. I saw hypocrisy. What I really mean is irony. What I mean is that Trump, Vance, Hegseth, and irony of ironies, a Kennedy, are all humorless monsters. They are Nazis without the spiffy uniforms. Trump wouldn’t know humor if it bit him in the ass. He demolishes the White House. He plans to build the Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile without any triomphe to his name. Have you seen the artist renderings of this monstrosity? Looks like he summoned Herr Speer from Hell.

I have to find a leader of stature who is not a nincompoop. I choose Pope Leo. Play ball! But please not the White Sox variety. Did you see how they surrendered to the Rays on Thursday? A 55-pitch ninth inning? Pope Leo, after you’ve vanquished Trump, the Sox need your blessings.

For another look at this topic, go to Matt Lewis's Substack article 

Tribute to my brother Tommy, Daytona Paddle Out

On Saturday, April 4, our family held a Paddle Out for my brother Tommy. As the eldest of nine brothers and sisters, and a writer, I was selected to be the speaker. I will let myself do the talking. In case you're wondering, I need assistance to move around this earth. A spinal injury demands it. Cruising the beach with a walker would not have been my idea of a good time back in my surfing heyday in the 1960s and '70s. But the alternative is not my idea of a Good time in 2026. Life is for living. Surf's up, Tommy! P.S.: Watching on YouTube carries various risks in this era of unfettered blathering. I am a practitioner of this art. Viewer beware! 

Get Out Now!

Remembrance: Paddle Out for Tommy Shay, Daytona Beach

Family members and friends paddle out and scatter ashes for Tommy Shay at Hartford Avenue approach in Daytona Beach. April 4, 2026. Photo by Robert Hougham.